That was a very satisfying episode. And for as predictable as DISCO is, I actually didn't see where it went at the end. I thought maybe they'd go back in time, not forwards. Maybe that's for the finale.

I'll bet good money that the Green spore is the good doctor.

I also really liked that if the show wanted to, we have outs to see Lorca again, because that guy is just fun in this show. It's also nice that we've got Michelle Yeoh back and alive in some capacity. I hope that again, we can see her from time to time in the future because she is the best.

For the most part I dug the episode, yeah, but I'm still not sure what I feel about the twist at the end. (and, I have to mention, the constant story-defining twists at the end of every goddamn episode are starting to get just a little tiring in the back-half of the season)

I think it's pretty obvious that Discovery is only going to go back in time before the end of the season. However bad the Federation/Klingon conflict of this era might have been, it certainly didn't involve the Federation being briefly wiped out. So more time travel shenanigans are likely.

I actually don't have a problem with the spore drive itself inexplicably sending them through time, as the series goes it's not even the third weirdest method of time travel.

But one thing I'm concerned about is that THIS might be the answer to the show runners swearing over and over again that everything will line up with canon as we know it by the end. That by going back in time again Discovery is going to write itself, or at least its tech, out of existence, and maybe even the entire Klingon war won't even occur. Burnham will not even become a mutineer and Stamets won't get the opportunity to create his tech. That would be such a disappointing and lazy way around the canon issue, though, but it might be the least messy way out of the canon-conundrum.

Don't have to worry about accounting for the spore drive if there was never a spore drive!

However bad the Federation/Klingon conflict of this era might have been, it certainly didn't involve the Federation being briefly wiped out.

I might rewatch that ending part just to double check. But 'losing the war' and 'being wiped out' are different things. The map changes we saw looked ominous, and Starfleet not responding was big, but I could have sworn that they only said they lost 25% of Federation space, which is pretty catastrophic but not 'wiped out' bad.

I wouldn't assume you misheard! My memory often has the opacity of swiss cheese. Anyways, I went and rewatched the episode preview and the admiral says "20% has been occupied" and that they "lost a third of our fleet". The tactical map that gets shown in the preview shows most of the losses on the Beta Quadrant side of Federation space. So hardly a doomed timeline scenario now that I think about it.

One thing I'm curious about is, where is the Mirror Discovery? Did she swap places back when the Prime Discovery jumped?

One thing I'm curious about is, where is the Mirror Discovery? Did she swap places back when the Prime Discovery jumped?

I've been waiting for that other shoe to drop ever since they landed in the mirror universe, and I expect we'll find out shortly in the next episode. I briefly wondered if mirror-Discovery might be responsible for the tide turning in the war, but there's no way the cartoonishly racist mirror universe crew would side with the Klingons, so if mirror-Discovery IS responsible it would have to be due to screwing something up. Maybe they tried to pull the same thing actual Discovery did and attempted to go undercover as their alternate selves (with no Lorca or Saru or Burnham on their bridge, though, that would be tough!) and bungled their way through a critical mission, but I suppose we'll see!

Maybe Captain 'Killey' attempted a coup of the Federation and was enough of a distraction that the Klingons gained a foothold.

The thing about the Terrans' racism is that they rationalize it by subjugating inferior/weak species. If they weren't so inferior, maybe they wouldn't have fallen to us, etc. I wouldn't be totally surprised to learn that the ISS Discovery decided they saw the war-obsessed, ruthless, honor-bound Klingons of this universe as more kindred spirits than the spineless humans of the Prime Universe.

One thing that I think is worth noting is that in the episode preview, we see admiral whatsherface and Sarek beam onto the Discovery's bridge with phasers drawn, being obviously confrontational. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that that's because the Mirror Discovery has gained itself a poor reputation.

I was really disappointed in the whole Mirror Universe arc and many of the revelations within (especially Lorca, which I still think is such a waste of a character), and I'm still annoyed by the over-reliance on twists… but I'm actually really intrigued by this new arc? Skipping ahead in the war to a point where the Federation is losing is a great idea; it makes them the underdog, it makes the Discovery's reappearance an important turning point, and it just changes things up. Plus, Terran Giorgiou sticking around is a development I didn't see coming, and a very cool one.

IDLE THOUGHTS-I love Capt Saru, and the brief exchange with Lorca they had.
-I'm not sure bringing back Mirror Yeoh was the way to go. She is still a pretty terrible person, maybe more terrible than Lorca
-Again, the Charon is super bad ass

The twist at the end of this episode was probably a bit predictable, but I still kinda rolled my eyes at it.

So it's obvious now that this season is going to end with Burnham betraying Georgiou again, probably because she's going to go too far and try to destroy the Klingon homeworld or something, but this time the crew will have Burnham's back.

The twist at the end of this episode was probably a bit predictable, but I still kinda rolled my eyes at it.

So it's obvious now that this season is going to end with Burnham betraying Georgiou again, probably because she's going to go too far and try to destroy the Klingon homeworld or something, but this time the crew will have Burnham's back.

*putting on my armchair pundit-hat* It's become clear to me that, despite my preference for consuming shows in the weekly format, for me at least Discovery probably should have been pooped out on Netflix all at once. And not because that format is inherently superior (it's not) but because this specific show, told in this specific way, would have benefited from it. Discovery thinks it's way more clever than it actually is. And while it's neat that there's a lot of forward planning, continuity, and consistency in how things are shown... under any amount of analysis and scrutiny, the show becomes imminently predictable and that predictability ruins the suspense it obviously wants the viewers to feel. If you were to watch the show in one or two sittings, you probably wouldn't have the time to think about and extrapolate what's to come next and maybe get a better experience out of it.

That said, I think this show and its format is great for the casual fan, and it's reportedly getting incredible amounts of success, especially overseas. It's not too clever to chase casual fans away, and the weekly format keeps the show's zeitgeist alive longer, keeps everyone on the same page, and allows for water cooler talk. People like my parents, who like Star Trek but aren't uberfans or spend hours after every episode exploring discussion threads have found themselves surprised more often than not by the show's twists and turns and have enjoyed discussing the show briefly with me and themselves after every episode. It's achieving, in that space, what TV shows dream of doing. It just, for me and I'm sure a number of you, not totally satisfying.

But I'm encouraged because the foundations are solid, growing pains are to be expected, and this first season is better than most Trek first seasons tend to be. My only real regret for the show is its focus on Michael Burnham's character. I understand the redemptive growth process the show wants to focus on, but that part is honestly the least interesting thing Discovery does. And while it isn't a fundamentally unsound idea to base a Star Trek show around, and Sonequa Martin is a fine actress, it hurts that conceit when she's continually being upstaged by far more interesting and compelling characters/performances. Jason Issacs is a tour de force and commands every scene he's in. Everything Doug Jones does is delightful. Mary Wiseman is everything that Wesley Crusher should have been as a character. Anthony Rapp is just... fun. Jayne Brook as Admiral Cornwell is fierce and the best parts of Capt. Janeway. And my lord, I will never stop lamenting that Discovery wasn't simply a show about Michelle Yeoh getting to be the established captain because everything she does is amazing. The cast seems more than solid enough for a Star Trek show. I hope whatever comes next gives them a little more room for growth and to demonstrate more classic officer competency. Interpersonal drama is all well and good, but I hope it's less frequently compromising the characters ability to do their jobs as Starfleet officers.

OK. So. The DISCO season finale was... Ok. I didn't dislike the ideas or solution, but it didn't seem the best executed and was certainly anticlimactic. Mostly, this episode seemed like it was a house-cleaning episode that felt like it was trying to tie everything up from whatever Fuller was doing with this season, and make it transition into whatever the show is going to be going forwards. Which is kinda too bad? I liked the idea of a Star Trek anthology show, and I think this cast is a little too much of a mixed bag to keep entirely.

So yeah. I liked the resolution for the most part, and there was a lot of fun character moments in this last episode (Tillie getting high on vog; dominatrix Georgiou, Voq gambling). But man oh man. The cliffhanger ending was just massive levels of eye-rolling pandering. I felt like I was watching a Disney Star Wars trailer. I really, really hope studio meddling isn't going to be the thing that sinks this going forwards. Especially since CBS probably is going to be extra anxious about it given how successful it's been for them.

Yeah, I thought it was anticlimactic as well. The Federation got really damn lucky, since A) Emperor Georgiou may not have been so agreeable (I'm still kind of surprised she gave up so easily) and B) The Klingon houses could have just killed L'Rell outright when she started making demands before she even got to explain anything (seriously, all she even did was lift up a Federation pad, she didn't elaborate on what exactly it was. The closest Klingon must've been like 20-30 feet away, how were they convinced by her flashing an all-purpose remote that could've been for anything?)

Still not sure how I feel about how both Tyler and Georgiou were settled at the end, but I guess they want to keep those plot threads open for the future, which I suppose means we're sticking with this cast and crew going forward. I was also looking forward to an anthology show, though maybe it was never realistic.

But ultimately, after everything is said and done this season, I'm still not convinced that this show needed to be set in the pre-Kirk era. The showrunners swore up and down that, yes, it was necessary, and any inconsistencies would make sense by the end. Well, the Spore Drive is the biggest one, and well, it's still there. 'Starfleet is looking for a non-human interface' is not enough to sweep it under the rug since it's a pretty huge technological innovation for the time period that we know is never developed and expanded and we still don't know why.

However, I still just don't see why this show couldn't have been set, like, decades or a century after the end of Voyager. This would have eliminated any issues with technological inconstancy, and allowed them to play around with new tech like the spore drive without having to make excuses to appease what is one of the most hyper-attentive fanbases in the world.

They could have said that after the Dominion War the Federation grew weaker and desperate, and this Klingon War could've been about finding its ideals again. Hell, the length of time between what we last saw and now could've allowed them to brush over the redesign of the Klingons (more genetic meddling after the empire withdrew and grew isolated post-Dominion), or maybe just made them a new species entirely, which is another thing that still bugs me. Why did the Klingons, and ONLY the Klingons, get such a drastic redesign? We still have the goofy blue-antennae'd Andorians, after all.

But really, we know why it was set in this era. It wasn't because it had to be set there for the sake of the story, it was because of nostalgia, both for fans and non-fans. Setting something in or near the Kirk-era for the fans is easy enough to explain, but for non-fans it makes sense as well. Ask your average person what they know about Star Trek and nine times out of ten their response will be about something connected to the original series, Kirk, Spock, Enterprise, Klingons, 'Beam Me Up Scotty', etc. (the other time will probably be to quote the Borg, the only real non-OS aspect to gain any widespread cultural recognition) If you need any other explanation for setting the series when they did just look at the last goddamn shot of the season (and yeah, wow, that was pandering).

But I think it make the story overall weaker to set it when they did. It could have had more room to grow and experiment if they set it in the future, but it also wouldn't have been as weirdly constrained as it was, because while I think it ultimately failed to account for the pre-established canon, it still tried to play lip-service to it all season long.

And really, what would we have lost if they just set it post-Voyager?

Sarek? Be honest, they only used Sarek so they could name-drop Spock. Just make him another Vulcan. Hell, make his character Tuvok, I'm sure Tim Russ would've gladly signed on.

Harry Mudd? Please. He could've been any scoundrel.

Lorca's Tribble? Did it even do anything? I was so expecting it to be Chekov's Tribble and play some role in the finale, considering they went to the goddamn Klingon Homeworld, but nope.

The Terrans ruling the Mirror Universe? Things easily could've turned around for them again post-DS9. Hell, the Klingon Alliance in the Mirror Universe was dealt a harsh blow in the last mirror universe episode of that series so it's not hard to imagine.

That last shot of the season? Not exactly necessary, was it?

It might seem petty to keep harping on the era they used for the setting, if they didn't swear that setting it when they did was A) necessary and B) they would reconcile everything with what we know so far, I'm just not convinced of either. They should've just said "yeah we're setting it in this era because CBS said we have to and we're just going to do what we want, eat it nerds", at least it would be honest.

And I could forgive it if the changes actually added anything, but I just don't see the what the Spore Drive or the Klingon redesign actually gave us in the end to make it all worth it.

And.... ugh, this post became more ranty than I wanted. I still have more thoughts, but I'll let them percolate a bit longer. Ultimately I liked the season, but I had to detach it from everything that came beforehand to do so, and that's a shame because the succession of TNG-DS9-VOY is still one of my favorite bits of TV ever and a big part of me wants to see it all continued, but I guess I have to make peace with the fact it probably won't ever happen because the franchise is now a slave to the easy cultural attachment of the goddamn Kirk era.

I do not mind the Klingon redesign at all. It's super cool. The twists were fun, the cast is great, and the show looks fab.

THAT SAID: none of this justified prequel status at all. And was for marketing as you said, but def had painted itself into a corner. And now that the show is a big success, do they need that continued connection? Probably not.

Now: Saru acting captain. Are they getting a new captain or are they intending to jump Michael to Captain ASAP?

And.... ugh, this post became more ranty than I wanted. I still have more thoughts, but I'll let them percolate a bit longer. Ultimately I liked the season, but I had to detach it from everything that came beforehand to do so, and that's a shame because the succession of TNG-DS9-VOY is still one of my favorite bits of TV ever and a big part of me wants to see it all continued, but I guess I have to make peace with the fact it probably won't ever happen because the franchise is now a slave to the easy cultural attachment of the goddamn Kirk era.

I posit that your attachment to the TNG era is no more rational than this show or other fan's attachment to the Kirk era. And no matter what era the show takes place in, it would be strapped with an equal amount of baggage and expectations thanks to how prolific the franchise is. What they're doing is fine.

I posit that your attachment to the TNG era is no more rational than this show or other fan's attachment to the Kirk era. And no matter what era the show takes place in, it would be strapped with an equal amount of baggage and expectations thanks to how prolific the franchise is. What they're doing is fine.

Incongruity is what, to me at least, defines Star Trek. Every show did its own thing, more or less. The epic fandom schism in the 80s and 90s between TOS trekkies and TNG trekkers largely revolved around how TNG didn't feel enough like Star Trek, and old fans couldn't get how nothing looked alike, was too far removed from the time frame, asinine debates about 'who was best', or certain series staples (where's the Vulcans? Or literally any familiar species?) were just completely absent. DS9 took things off a spaceship named Enterprise, and put it on a stationary space station. Voyager one upped TNG and just completely divorced its crew from Starfleet by marooning its titular ship completely out of range. And Enterprise suffered the same fan complaints about going back in time that in hindsight was beyond silly. Star Trek is a great franchise, but the lore exploring the greater setting outside of the little windows we see on various single ships is surprisingly blank, and there's tons of space to explore the strange and new during interstitial periods, just as much if not more so than if this show were post-Nemesis.

I posit that your attachment to the TNG era is no more rational than this show or other fan's attachment to the Kirk era. And no matter what era the show takes place in, it would be strapped with an equal amount of baggage and expectations thanks to how prolific the franchise is. What they're doing is fine.

I wear my love of the TNG era on my sleeve, yes. But I'm not asking for Discovery to be set in the TNG era, and nor am I asking (as much as I would love it) for cameos and direct references to TNG crew or events, like the show is currently throwing around names like Spock and Pike.

My desire to set it post-TNG is due to wanting to watch the show and not have to go "....wait a minute" every episode, not just because it contradicts what's been established for this era, it complicates what we know WILL come.

(and this whole spiel came out way longer than I intended so I'ma just spoilerpop it for anyone who doesn't want to read my ramblings)

The Spore Drive is the biggest problem Discovery has. Back when the Mirror Universe interlude was wrapping up it seemed like the spore network was dying. "Good" I thought, "It's a bit easy, but that does eliminate the need to explain why it's not a thing in the future." But then they tied the fate of the dang universe to the Spore Network and revitalized it, so naturally the Spore Network still exists in the future because the universe still exists. The most that was said about it was "Starfleet wants a non-human interface for the Spore Drive", so.... we're supposed to believe that in the decades that followed, with every other technological advancement, they never found a solution to this? When Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant and Starfleet finally learned of this, no one went "Oh hey remember that Spore Drive thing that could take us anywhere in the universe that we couldn't quite figure out? Maybe we could dig that up."

The Klingon redesign is another one, and while I'm not a huge fan of the new look (the lack of hair just bugs me) it does contradict how we know they're supposed to look, not only from the original series, but Enterprise too. And that's a whole other thing, whether or not they should have meddled in explaining Klingon genetics once before (thanks for dropping that line, DS9), but nevertheless they did, and now we have to reconcile how Klingons look again. But there was no mention of this in the series at all. At least the Spore Drive got the most half-hearted handwavey dismissal at the end.

Not to mention a whole host of minor things here and there. Like using full-body holograms for communication where-the-hell-ever, when the entire point of The Doctor's early character development on Voyager was that he was confined to sick bay and the holodeck because no other part of the ship had holo-emitters. Why does a ship from 10 years before the original series have this tech, but Voyager doesn't? Even if these early holograms weren't 'solid' like TNG-era holograms, they still enabled two-way holographic communication, and there's no way that wouldn't be useful to an EMH.

Could they still explain these things? Sure, there might yet be an explanation for the loss of the Spore Drive in a future season, and of the current state of the Klingons, to reconcile everything. But my point is that this is a problem that didn't need to happen to begin with because nothing in the story mandated it be set in this era outside of dropping some names, and Sarek.

Well that at cultural awareness from the wider audience at large.

And that's what bugs me. It feels cynical. Bad enough the new movies went to this well already, but at least they had the spine to say "Yeah it's a new universe, we're gonna do what we want and nothing that happens will contradict what comes after". But here, they swore it would be the prime universe, and they said it will all make sense, they'd reconcile everything.

But they didn't and every inconsistency stands out even more, and because Star Trek has exactly the sort of fandom that obsesses over stuff like that it makes it even yet harder to ignore, and none of it was necessary. This story was not improved by setting it in this era, it gained nothing from it.

My problems with the series and my desire to see it set post-TNG aren't because I love TNG so much, it's because all of these complications and, yes, retcons could have been avoided by just setting it later.

I can have a bit of an obsessive compulsive personality, and I accept that it's probably for the best to just not care as much about all of this. I can see how people found the show enjoyable on its merits, and I enjoyed parts of it too. But every time I was starting to something else popped up that made me go "....wait a minute." and then that's all I could think about.

And I wish I could turn off that "...wait a minute"-ing part of my brain, but the continuity issues just stood out way too much and were too frequent to do that, all the while in the back of my mind there's the promise from the showrunners that they'd reconcile everything, so I spent mental effort by trying to figure out how all the while anticipating said reconciliation that never materialized.

They never should have made that promise. They should have just said "yeah we're doing what we want, it may not all add up with established canon, but try and enjoy the ride anyway", that would've been honest and maybe I could have relaxed.

I know this is an issue unique to me and fans like me, and that's fine. I'm just saying why the show bugged me, not that it should bug everyone else. I just disagree that setting it in this era was at all necessary, and I think it just created too many problems to be worth it overall.

My desire to set it post-TNG is due to wanting to watch the show and not have to go "....wait a minute" every episode, not just because it contradicts what's been established for this era, it complicates what we know WILL come.

And I wish I could turn off that "...wait a minute"-ing part of my brain, but the continuity issues just stood out way too much and were too frequent to do that, all the while in the back of my mind there's the promise from the showrunners that they'd reconcile everything, so I spent mental effort by trying to figure out how all the while anticipating said reconciliation that never materialized.

So, just to get it out of the way so I don't sound like I'm talking down to you, because I really empathize with your POV. I used to be you with regards to my Star Trek fandom. I ordered one of these off the TV during the Viewer's Choice Marathon that ran before the final TNG episode and read it more thoroughly than I've ever read any single book in life:

And I probably have a mild, undiagnosed case of OCD to boot. But watching Star Trek the way I used to is not enjoyable. Because if you want to, you can nitpick literally anything from Star Trek apart into a million pieces in ruins. I was watching Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the other night. How does any of these fools not know where Alameda is? Didn't they go to Starfleet Academy in SF????

And it's not like I can turn that part of my brain off. But I can evaluate intellectually that hey, most of these nitpicks don't matter, and that it just comes with the turf. Star Trek isn't something concise and neatly planned out from a single mind. It never had a series bible to go by. What it did have, was hundreds of different writers who all had their own ideas, so invariably these kinds of inconsistencies happen. I can also realize that because it's such a long and storied franchise, it really doesn't matter when you place it, it's going to have the same kinds of problems you think of (I don't care if a show is 100 years after Kirk, or 1,000 years after TNG - being able to time travel by slingshoting around the sun is WAY more problematic than a black ops spore drive that could be easily destroyed or locked away in a Indiana Jones warehouse at any point to maintain your precious continuity.) as there's hundreds of different insane future-tech that gets used and forgotten all across the franchise.

So I just learned to have fun with it. I still see and think about the things you do, but it doesn't bother me, because we were never meant to engage with Star Trek with that kind of religious fanaticism. To me, it's fun like finding easter eggs now. I can laugh along at the occasional extremely frequent continuity oversight, and instead focus on what matters more, which is usually whether the character performances and morality plays are good, or some dumb hokey space-thing happens like a rock-tossing Gorn or The Bride of Chaotica cackling manically.

Just caught up on the last two episodes. There were some powerful moments in there, though as a whole the finale did feel a bit anti-climactic after everything that had come before, plot-wise. Also it felt like it had some editing issues - like they stumbled trying to fit the actual plot action around all the character moments they wanted to get in, and as a result there were bits where things progressed weirdly fast, in fits and starts. I almost thought Georgiou had killed or seriously injured Tilley when she was trying to warn Michael about the bomb, but then literally two seconds later Tilley was talking to the others and just fine. It took me a moment to realize the only point of that was Georgiou had claimed and made off with the bomb, without really caring about what the others were up to. Not to say that one thing was of any major importance, just a symptom of several things that made me feel maybe putting together the last few eps was a bit rushed.

That said, I still enjoyed it quite a bit and was pretty satisfied with the ending. I also note that in addition to the fact that Georgiou and Tyler are both out there as potential plot hooks, there's one more dangling thread in that everyone just assumedprime-universe Lorca must be dead (I guess not to mention we don't know what actually happens to someone dropped into an active spore network power center (but then again whether either of those are used probably depends on Jason Isaac's availability practically speaking)).

Of course, the beginning of the next season has it's own brand new (extremely pandery yes but that doesn't really bother me) plot hook to deal with first.

Yeah, this episode was really anticlimactic. Everything just moved too fast, from the pacing of the episode to how quickly things worked out. Georgiou just gives up that easily? L'Rell becomes Klingon leader with nary a complaint? I get there's some degree of justification, but it feels so limp as a resolution.

I'm kind of torn on Discovery as a whole. I liked the first half of the season a lot; the premise of a science vessel being commandeered for military purposes is a good one, and strikes at the tension inherent to Star Trek as a franchise. I think it also did a good job with pacing: brisk but still finding time for lulls or breaks in the narrative to do other stuff.

The second half, though, dampened my enthusiasm. The pacing got brisker, focusing entirely on the plot; which isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but it doesn't pair well with the show's reliance on twists. There was a new twist every episode or so, and the rate of reveal meant there wasn't enough time to explore or even process the last one. Tyler/Voq got built and built and built for episodes, but then it's over and done with in one.

I will say that, in the moment, I always enjoyed it. Even when the show goes off the rails, the actors are really good at selling it, and it's easy to just "go along for the ride". It was a fun watch, to be sure… I just wish it was more.

Re: the anthology aspect—

I actually had the opposite takeaway; the way this season ended, it feels totally open to wiping the slate clean and doing something completely different. Sure, there's some dangling threads, but it resolved the Klingon War, had the Federation reaffirm its principles, and completed Burnham's redemption (complete with reinstated rank). Ending with the Discovery meeting the Enterprise feels like it's passing the baton, as if saying "and here's where TOS picks up" (obviously not chronologically true, but that's not the point).

I don't think they actually will keep the anthology concept, mind, but I don't see this episode as being evidence of that.

Re: chronology and continuity—

I agree the placement of this show is really awkward and does it no favours. I'm generally not one to get too hung up on continuity, but being a prequel necessarily boxes it in: the Klingon War has to resolve, the Spore Drive has to be shelved, etc. And yet they didn't actually take advantage of the timeline placement for anything other than some gratuitous cameos, fun as they could be; it didn't illuminating anything about the Federation, pre-TOS. I would have set it after Voyager, to give it more room to breathe and experiment with new things; Discovery's Klingons could have been a new race entirely, for instance.

Or, if it had to be set around TOS (which it probably did, thanks to executive fiat), maybe they could have chosen a more interesting period. Say, between TOS and TMP, or even after TUC? I think those periods hold a bit more inherent mystery to them, where even if a show didn't actually illuminate much, it would still be inherently more interesting in ways "10 years before Kirk" isn't.

Everything just moved too fast, from the pacing of the episode to how quickly things worked out. Georgiou just gives up that easily? ...

I'm actually not sure about that one. Yes, she did acquiesce surprisingly easily to the new plan once confronted, but she may have simply decided that was the smoother path to getting things she wants. I was struck by the look she gave earlier when the admiral told her to "make herself at home". Does that mean figuring out how to raise a new empire? Her first gambit was wildly successful for a time, getting put in charge of the major Federation mission and bending them to her methods. But she may have realized that, in this universe, shows of amoral strength on the scale of genocide would meet too much resistance to leave her in a place of power, at least among the humans. By accepting the new plan, she's free to go off and find other ways.

I agree the placement of this show is really awkward and does it no favours. I'm generally not one to get too hung up on continuity, but being a prequel necessarily boxes it in: the Klingon War has to resolve, the Spore Drive has to be shelved, etc. And yet they didn't actually take advantage of the timeline placement for anything other than some gratuitous cameos, fun as they could be; it didn't illuminating anything about the Federation, pre-TOS. I would have set it after Voyager, to give it more room to breathe and experiment with new things; Discovery's Klingons could have been a new race entirely, for instance.

I still don't buy these arguments against its prequel status. Because again, the reality is that lore and fan expectations are going to be just as limiting no matter when this would be set. Enterprise was set so far removed from everything else in the franchise, and in such a gigantic dark spot in lore that it shouldn't have had any of these problems. And yet, fans bitched and moaned in the exact same ways about the exact same things. Those unresolved issues too, are quite literally a dime a dozen in Star Trek. There's so many times where the Enterprise does something technologically insane and it's never addressed again.

Meanwhile, just the general rules of popular fiction are far more constraining for the plot than any pinpoint location of a series in a timeline. The good guys can't die, because there needs to be an episode next week. Same with the ship blowing up for good. We'll never see a Star Trek that isn't centered on a Federation POV because then it wouldn't be Star Trek.

Post-Voyager wouldn't be any more liberating for writers. Especially when most sources of conflict have been purged from the Milky Way Galaxy here at this juncture. The Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Quadrant powers are all at peace. And the big bad of the Delta Quadrant - the Borg - were completely brought to heel by Janeway & Co. You can obviously still have plenty dilemma of the week episodes centering around new unexplored star systems, but post-Voyager/Nemesis is tapped out of big bads without either massively rolling back diplomatic progress, which would feel like it's cheapening the events of previous Treks, or introducing new super secret hidden baddies that would also feel cheap because where have these guys been before?

Anyways, that's all I'll say on this again, I promise! Meanwhile, this was a cameo I felt needed addressing in the last episode because of how top notch it was:

I'm normally not one to look to closely to continuity - as you say, who cares if it's fun - but Discovery made me feel like the writers wanting to have their cake and eat it at the same time, without putting enough work to earn the cake in the first place. They did nothing to justify neither the setting nor the time period, and for most of the episodes the series could have been called Mass Effect: Discovery and nobody would have blinked an eye.

Discovery for me was as it most interesting when it was exploring the disconnection between the military and scientific sides of Starfleet, but they never got too deep into it, instead discarding those questions in favor of the Twist of the Week. And since it was all about the twists, they never got into exploring the ramifications of the twist themselves. Most of Voq's arc, for example, fizzled into nothing.

So I'm really disappointed by the series. I will come back, because I did have fun, but nothing was gained by placing this series in the Star Trek Universe 10 years before Kirk Prime.... except just some cheap fanservice points to try to ingratiate themselves with the fanbase with the least possible effort.

Husband subscribed to CBS All Access a couple weeks ago so we could watch this (CBS All Access is a terrible streaming service). It's a good way to watch!

We liked it quite a bit. I got spoiled on a lot before going in just by osmosis and because I didn't care too much. Husband was good at sniffing out the twists, though the show loves to telegraph them, which I like. I'd rather have a twist you can figure out than one that comes out of nowhere just to shock you.

Queer Twitter went a bit ballistic when Dr. Whozits got murdered. It was remarkably short-sighted for the show to have the first gay couple on a Star Trek show, one of whom is best known from RENT as playing a queer person of color who dies so everyone else can be sad, and here plays... a queer person of color who dies so everyone else can be sad. It's also comical how many times they make you watch his neck getting snapped.